LIVE IT

Time to take a few moments out for some light and interesting reading – a wellearned break from numbers and statistics!

Life Hack

As reported by BBC news, a florist in Merthyr Tydfil has been leaving what she calls ‘lonely bouquets’ for local people, in a bid to cheer them up.

Fay Trowbridge first started delivering lonely bouquets around the town five years ago, when her business, Daisy Chain, was celebrating its first anniversary. She has since given away more than 150 bunches of flowers to people in the town.

This year, she wanted to support local businesses by leaving the bouquets outside shops, on park benches, in schools, cafes and gyms. The lonely bouquets have been popping up throughout May, to shine a light on Mental Health Awareness Month.

Fay told BBC News, “It’s been really difficult for us businesses with the cost-of-living issue, so I wanted to send traffic to local places to help them with business.

“Even if I only made one person smile, to me that’s better than none.”

Got a drawer full of partly used batteries? To find out which ones have the most juice left, drop them onto a table from a height of around six inches. If they give a small bounce then fall over, they’re good. If they bounce around more than that, they’re dead or very low on power.

Pub quiz

1. Which European country will be adopting the euro for the first time in 2023?

2. What are MPs forbidden from wearing in parliament?

3. What popular confectionery product was banned in Singapore in 1992?

4. True or false: It is illegal to place a postage stamp upside down on a letter in the UK.

5. What is Yorkshire caviar?

4.

3. Chewing gum

2. Armour

False 5. Mushy peas

Answers: 1. Croatia

DID YOU KNOW?

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, “strengths” is the longest word in the English language with one vowel. The word contains nine letters, eight of them being consonants.

Dorset farm park accidentally breeds rare lambs

Farmer Palmers, a popular Dorset farm park, has recently welcomed two rare-breed lambs in a rather unexpected turn of events. Five months ago, one of the farm’s Shetland ewes escaped and got into the same pen as a handsome Valais ram called Hank, leading to predictable outcomes.

“You only need a couple of hours for the deed to be done, so we only (realised) a couple weeks ago when she gave birth to the cutest little lambs,” farm director Sandra Palmer-Snellin told the BBC.

The twin lambs, one boy and one girl, are a cross between the Shetland mum and the Valais dad. The farm says these are a new breed to the team and have decided to call the breed ‘Shalais’ in recognition of their heritage.

The park, near Poole in Dorset, transitioned from a working dairy farm to a farm park and petting zoo around 25 years ago. It has breeding programmes in place for its animals, but these new crossbreeds were not part of the plan.

Sandra added, “The Valais are quite impressive sheep, with black faces and a lovely thick fleece. The Shetland sheep are kept in a separate pen but one of the females must have been full of the joys of spring and quite determined.”

They Drained A Whole Reservoir To Find A Phone

An Indian government official drained an entire reservoir after he lost his phone. Food inspector Rajesh Vishwas was reported by the Times of India to be taking selfies on his Samsung smartphone by Kherkatta dam when it dropped into the water. Claiming the device contained ‘sensitive government data,’ Rajesh instructed divers to search for the phone. When they couldn’t find it, he then demanded diesel pumps be used to drain the lake. More than two million litres of water was pumped out over three days. Unsurprisingly, when the phone was discovered in the mud at the bottom of the reservoir, it was waterlogged and would not switch on.